MISFIT
by NerdyNobody
Summary: Somewhere in the universe, there is a world unlike any other, that watches over the spider web of the multiverse, protecting it from and neutralizing threats. This is who they are.
1. Unique

There are a lot of universes. A lot of them. An amount beyond infinity that one could not even begin to comprehend, all unique in one way or another, no matter how small. Connected and interlaced with each other like a spiders web, and floating within the constant like stars in the galaxy. Yes, each and every one of them was unique. However one of these worlds in particular, was especially unique. One who's web spread far and wide through every single universe in it's reach and beyond, lighting up the constant with it's ethereal beauty and-

"HEATHCLIFF!" A shout rang through the giant room, nearly causing the poor redhead to tumble out of his seat from surprise. He pushed his glasses up his nose, barely having time to turn as a hand suddenly slammed a messy bunch of metal and wires onto his table, his vision invaded by the familiar shock of bright, electric blue hair of his best friend. He sighed, raising a brow as he looked over the mess that his friend called a project.

"So what did you do now?" He asked. Jackson raised his hands

"Ok, ok. Heathcliff. Dude. Look. I didn't really mean for it to get this tangled up. I did that thing you wanted me to do and I put the titanium conductor chips to the left of the alloy dispenser and electron neuro processors, but it didn't look like it was gonna fit so I pushed up some of the wires to make some room somewhere else, but I accidentally broke one of the metal plates and-" Jackson rambled on about the mess, his hands gesturing wildly as he spoke, Heathcliff simply watching him and occasionally humming to show his attentiveness.

It was quite often that Jackson would be working on one thing or another when he wasn't on a mission or taking a break, often coming to him to have him help with something or another when he needed it, or occasionally just coming over so he could talk to someone as he worked. Unsurprising, considering how close the two were. There wasn't too many times they weren't paired together for missions or something of the like. Very much different than most universes, Heathcliff thought.

The two's attention was torn away when across the room, there was a loud whirring sound, and a flash of light. From where the light had come from, two people stepped.

"Duncan! Ruby! Hey!" Jackson greeted immediately, straightening up and waving to the two as the stepped from the metal platform they had appeared on.

"Hey guys! How's it going?" Ruby greeted with a slight smile, walking over to them and pushing some of the hair that had fallen loose from the bun on her head back, the other boy on her heels.

"It's pretty good. Jackson broke another one of his projects." Heathcliff replied, smirking and leaning back as Jackson flushed indignantly.

"I did not! At least not on purpose." He protested, glaring at the redhead. Heathcliff chuckled, shaking his head.

"Anyway, how was your trip to universe 2609?" He asked.

"Pretty good. Got into a bit of a scuffle with the inhabitants of one of the planets there, but otherwise everything went according to plan." Duncan said, cracking his knuckles and stretching his arms over his head, where the slight raise in his shirt as he did so showed off a couple of the small spots of vitiligo on his stomach.

"Indeed. And I see you dyed your hair again, Jackson." Ruby said, looking to the bright blue hair. He grinned proudly, running a hand through it.

"Yep! It was getting pretty dull, and my roots were showing, so I decided to get two birds with one stone and dye it all." He said. The four chuckled, before Duncan stopped and glanced around.

"Hey, by the way, where are Julio and Matilda?" He asked.

"They're on platform h getting snacks. They should be back any second now, actually." Heathcliff said, his eyes tracing up the high walls where various circular pads flew along, taking any people who happened to be on them to their destination. After adding about ten more facilities to the already copious amounts the MISFIT base had, they were installed so people didn't have to keep walking forever to get to their destinations.

So for a minute, the four simply stood around, content to talk more about how Duncan and Ruby's mission went as the waited for the last two to arrive. And soon enough, they did.

"Hey guys! We're back with the goods!" Came a light voice from above them. They looked up, watching as one of the pads floated over to a platform on the side of the room, sinking onto it. Matilda stepped off first, her arms full of food and a grin on her face as Julio followed her, even more items in his own arms.

"Hey you two! About time you got back." Jackson said, turning and crossing his arms with a teasing smile. He was promptly smacked in the face by a package of freeze dried apples and jelly worms as Julio stuck his tongue out at him.

"The vending machine was broken and we had to go to platform f to get it all." He said.

"Yup. But in any case, hey you two! Good to see you back! How was your week in 2609?" Matilda said, dumping the rest of her food on the table over top of the mangled machine parts along with Julio.

"It was good! Only one scuffle this time." Duncan said, picking up a bag of crunchy peanut puffs and opening it.

"That's good. At least it wasn't like the time when you guys nearly made an entire planetary ecosystem go after you." Julio snorted. Everyone cringed slightly despite the grins still on their faces, laughing together for a moment.

"We are still never doing that again." Ruby said, shaking her head and leaning on the table.

"Aw come on. What's not fun about near death by an entire hive mind planet?" Jackson said sarcastically, tossing the bag of jelly worms up a couple times before ripping it open to dig into the candies inside. Ruby rolled her eyes at her teammate, smirking slightly.

"In any case, we'd love to stay and chat and eat snacks, but we need to report back and do the entire stack of mission paperwork we got assigned." She said, pushing away from the table. Duncan nodded, still chewing on his own bag of snacks.

"You know, we're not doing anything, so we could help you with that. We can bring our snacks to the mission table and do the work there. If everyone is willing of course." Heathcliff said, looking around at the others.

"I'm in. It'll give me something to look at other than scraps and wires." Jackson said with a shrug.

"I'll help. I've been bored anyway. Flinch?" Matilda chimed in.

"Sure. I wanna hear more about the trip to 2609 anyway." The boy said. Ruby and Duncan smiled as the group gathered the snacks once more, falling into line with her.

"Let's get to it then." She chuckled, starting forward.

Yes, the group was unique. A bunch of children the universe had never made before. Although that wasn't saying much, considering it could be said for every universe, it was still a nice thought. They are a group of guardians. Protectors of the multiverse and keepers to all of space time. They are watchers. They are unique. They are MISFIT.


	2. Pranks

Ruby watched as the holograms around her whirled around with every swipe of her finger, her eyes darting about as she scanned over them. She had to admit, this was one of her favorite jobs to do when working. Universe scanning. Doing this job, she was given a set few universes that needed a look over, wether it be because of an assumed anomaly, or being a "on watch" universe, or even something small such as a suspicion of someone messing with the universes timeline or unknowingly doing something that may affect the multiverse's web.

She enjoyed doing this. No matter why she was looking over the universe in the first place, it was always ever so interesting to take a glimpse into other universes. To be able to look into other people's lives. Particularly other versions of herself and teammates. Some may assume it would get boring after a while, but not at all. Not for her, anyway.

"Hey Ruby, watcha doing?" She heard a sing song voice come out from behind her, a pair of slender arms draping themselves over her shoulders. Ruby rolled her eyes, smiling slightly.

"Hello, Mindy. I'm doing universe checks at the moment. Back so soon from 679?" She replied, feeling the other girl's head rest on her shoulder to look at what she was doing.

"Yeah. Turns out it was a false alarm. Some guy made some pretty powerful machine that went haywire and sent a massive pulse across the multiverse, but it didn't actually break from the web or anything. The MUTANTS had already dealt with it by the time I got there." Mindy replied. Ruby hummed, taking at look at the girl.

She looked the same as always, hair cut just short of a buzz, eyes bright with a wide grin on her face, raised eyebrows giving slight attention to the scar just above the right one.

"That's good. I was worried we were going to have another situation like last month." Ruby chuckled. Mindy snorted as well, pulling back so the other girl could turn to share a hug with her.

"Yeah yeah, but anyway, you close to finishing this stuff up? I wanna show you something." She said. Ruby raised a brow, glancing back at her work.

"Well yes. Just a few more minutes and I should be done. Why?" She asked. An innocent smile crossed Mindy's face, whistling and looking away.

"Welllllll..."

"Heathcliff, there's no way a 99x volt particle generator would work in machine that size. It wouldn't fit and it would explode!"

"Ok but hear me out, if we put a few different smaller and lower watt generators in it, would it work? Because I mean..."

Duncan rolled his eyes as Heathcliff continued to go on, however still listening to his technical ramblings as they walked along, weaving around the scientists milling around.

"Hey! Heathcliff! Duncan! Come here!" a voice suddenly rang out. The two turned, looking to see Ruby jogging up.

"Oh, hello Ruby. Something up?" Duncan asked. The taller girl nodded, gesturing for them to follow her.

"Yeah, you could say that. We have a bit of a technical problem with a device we found in one of the supposedly empty universes, and need you two to look it over." She explained. Duncan and Heathcliff looked at each other, their eyebrows furrowing.

"Has anybody else tried to mess with it?" Heathcliff asked in slight concern. Ruby shook her head, leading the two over to a desk where something sat. A small box like object sat on it, about the size of an old radio. It had multiple buttons and switches all over it, and screws and panels galore.

"We haven't tried to open it, but we figured you would be the best to do it since you're some of the smartest people here. We've only been able to distinguish the fact that it isn't dangerous. At least we hope so." Ruby explained. Duncan rubbed the back of his neck as he scanned it, buzzing his lips.

"Well, we have time, so we might as well try. Mind getting our tools?" He said. Ruby smiled and nodded.

"Of course." She responded, turning to get the tool carriers for the two. Almost immediately, they began to work on it. Making idle chat as they went, they slowly began to make way on the object, every so often a panel would pop open or something would slide out, giving even more puzzles to be solved. It took nearly the entire day to finally get to what they assumed was the end, a small panel popping out with a green button.

"Holy crap. Is that it? Finally. That took forever." Heathcliff groaned, cracking his stiffened bones. Duncan nodded, rolling his wrists to stretch them out.

"I assume it is. Shall we?" He said. Heathcliff nodded, and together they watched as the smaller boy pressed the button.

As soon as he did, the box sprang open. And before they could react, the two were both splattered with copious amounts of mayonnaise, along with bits of pickle, ham, lettuce, and olive. The two sat in bewilderment as sounds of mad cackling erupted from just beyond where they were sitting. They looked up, and watched as Mindy sashayed over with a grin, smacking two pieces of bread on top of both of their heads. She leaned down into their faces, grinning.

"Jackson set this little prank up for revenge when you hid his sandwich." She said bluntly, letting out another bout of her donkeyish laughter. The two stared at her, silent, frozen, and completely bewildered as she stepped to the side and they were blinded by a flash. When their vision cleared, they looked to see Matilda, standing with a camera with a grin. Ruby stood beside her, casually waving. Finally, Duncan and Heathcliff looked at each other.

"This means war."


	3. Lies

Bubbly laughs echoed through the small break room as the MISFITS licked away at ice cream cones, Julio making a show of balancing the cherry that had once been on top of the icy treat atop his nose, flipping it up after a second and catching it in his mouth. The others clapped a bit, continuing to laugh at his antics as he did a dramatic bow before sitting back down onto the couch behind him, right next to Duncan.

"Where did you even learn to do that? Could I do that?" Jackson asked with a chuckle, taking a bite out of his sugar cone. Julio shrugged, grinning teasingly.

"I dunno. It takes a sort of innate talent. I don't know if you have it in you, dude." He replied smugly. Jackson gave the other boy a mock offended look as the others let out another bout of laughter. Ruby leaned back in her seat, sucking up some of the dripping ice cream. God she was glad the allergy medications she had were powerful enough to let her eat this stuff with no consequence.

"I'm sure I could build something so that you would be able to do it, Jackson. Don't worry." Heathcliff snorted. Jackson groaned, dramatically throwing himself over the arm rest of the sofa he sat at, tossing an arm over his face.

"Oh woe is me! My own teammates don't believe I can balance a cherry on my nose! My own metaphorical flesh and blood! The betrayal! The pain! The utter humiliation!" He cried, giving over the top gestures with his hands as he went about his little show, once again gaining a bout of laughter from his teammates. Ruby chuckled, glancing around again. She frowned slightly when she noticed the absence of a certain short korean girl.

"Hey, guys, do you know where Matilda is? I sent her a message earlier to tell her about this, but she hasn't arrived yet. And she didn't answer the message either." She said. The team looked over at her, looking slightly confused. There were a few head shakes, but Duncan took a moment before nodding.

"Yeah! I remember her saying she needed to stay in her room doing a bit of paperwork this morning. She might still be there." He said. Ruby tilted her head, humming slightly. Paperwork shouldn't take that long.

"Well I think I'll go and get her. She may not have gotten my message. Get some of that rocky road cone ready, she's gonna be mad we didn't get her sooner." Ruby laughed, exiting the room.

She strode along, already knowing the path to the other girls room quite well. She went there quite a lot for little "girls nights" as they called them. Just sitting around playing video games, eating marshmallow treats, and universe watching. Fun times if she did say so herself. So it didn't take long for her to arrive at the door, knocking a few times before opening it.

"Hey Matilda! Where have you been? We've been having ice cream without...you..." Ruby trailed off. The air in the room was thick. Something felt wrong. Very wrong. It was dark, save for the small night light in the corner of the room. Ruby stepped in quietly, leaving the door open a crack so she had light to find the lamp and turn it on before closing the door.

"Matilda?" She asked again. Her eyes were drawn to the bed by a noise, landing on a small, human shaped lump under the covers.

"Hey. Are you sleeping? What's up?" Ruby asked, confused as she walked over and pulled off the covers. She was met with a jarring sight. There was Matilda, looking much worse for wear. Her clothes were rumpled, and her hair looked like a mess. When the smaller girl looked up, her eyes were red and puffy. She had been crying. She suddenly threw herself onto Ruby, much to her surprise, only just barely giving her time to catch her and sit down to rub her back.

"Matilda! What's wrong? What happened?" Ruby asked, wide eyed. Matilda sniffled, her arms tightening around the taller girl.

"I-Its a-another universe...r-rips are appearing!" She chocked out. Ruby stiffened, freezing for a moment.

"Another universe is getting rifts? Which one?" She asked tensely. This was bad. A universe getting rips could mean...bad things. Not just for the universe.

"259...r-reports are saying it started h-happening a week ago..." She whimpered, burying her face in Ruby's chest.

"W-We're going to loose it! We c-can't hide again...we're going to be terminated!" Matilda sobbed. Ruby bit hard on her lip, hugging the smaller girl tightly.

"No. I will never let that happen. I've said it before and I'll say it again. We aren't getting terminated. Any of us. I won't let that happen." Ruby told her, beginning to card her fingers through Matilda's hair.

"B-But what if we're found out this time? Just lying may not work! They might find out!" She responded frantically, gripping Ruby harder.

Ruby looked away, attempting to take a deep breath as she continued to rub Matilda's back. No. They couldn't find out. She would never let them. Not with her entire teams on the line. She of all people knew that even despite their skill and the fact that they had a deep rooted connection in that universe, they were disposable. If it was found out they made mistakes like that, they would be killed and replaced. Maybe have their brains dissected to examine and figure out what went wrong. Why they made the mistakes.

She would never let them hurt her team. Never. If that meant lying to their faces, then so be it. As their leader, she would protect them. No matter what.

"Hey. It's ok. We can still fix this. It's only gone for good after at least a month. If we work now, we can still get things right. Ok? No I'm not going to let anyone get terminated." Ruby said firmly, pulling away so she could look Matilda in the eyes. The girl swallowed as she looked at Ruby, sniffling and trying to wipe off her tears. She nodded quietly, giving Ruby one last hug.

"Yeah..I'm sorry. I trust you." Matilda said quietly. Ruby smiled slightly, rubbing her head.

"Don't worry. It's ok. Let's go gather everyone up and get that mission in. We have a universe to save." She said confidently. Matilda smiled slightly as Ruby took her hand, the two standing up and walking to the door.

"...Hey. Is that ice cream offer off now?"

"Definitely not. There's a rocky road cone waiting for you."

"You're the best."


	4. Kids

The day outside the MISFITS base almost perfectly reflected the mood of the six children shuffling slowly back towards the break room after a long mission. Dark, rainy, dreary, and all around a day for even people that liked the rain to be trodden down by. They were wrapped up and bandaged all over, Heathcliff and Jackson both limping quite a bit. The LOVELIES of course had to be busy with other matters right now, and wouldn't be able to come help heal them until a full day later. Needless to say, none of them were in a good mood.

Once they were in the break room, they all practically flopped down into chairs or the couches, forms slumping completely in exhaustion.

"Geez. What a wreck." Jackson said, pushing back his messy blue hair from where it had fallen into his face.

"You got that right. Seriously, who even brings _enchanted golems_ to a knife fight?" Julio agreed, not even having any energy to reach into his pocket and pull out a chocolate bar to munch upon.

It went quiet again after that, as it often did in these situations. They all knew it was better to take some time to calm down and get energy back rather than waste more in talking. But eventually, they heard their pigtailed leader mumble something under her breath. All of them glanced over at her, some raising brows.

"What was that?" Heathcliff asked the girl, a bit worried at the way she had her hands pressed up against her face, seeming to be shaking slightly.

"Why is it always kids?" Ruby said more clearly. This statement seemed to grab the group's attention more. A couple of them sat straighter or propped themselves tenderly up onto bruised arms to look at her more head on.

"What do you mean?" Matilda asked her gently, eyebrows also furrowed together in slight concern. They could all feel the start of a talk coming. Having been together so long and being so close, they always could.

"I...I-I mean, why is it always the kids who have to do this stuff?" Ruby said, tossing her hands up before they flopped to her sides, "In the multiverse, why does it always seem like these- these _children_ get drawn into the most violent cycles? They shouldn't have to _deal_ with this! They're kids, and they should be allowed to be kids! They shouldn't have to be forced to grow up so fast because they're tossed into being child soldiers before they even hit puberty! They shouldn't be _doing_ this! They should...they should...I don't even know! We've been stuck in the _same thing_ since we were just 7 and 8! They should be doing stuff like playing catch with their friends! Or looking for frogs and salamanders and bugs next to rivers! Cooking with mom! Painting and making a mess! Skipping stones on ponds! Or- O-Or..."

The girl seemed to shut off again, putting her hands over her face and leaving her teammates in a bit of a shock at the sudden outburst of emotion. But as it slowly sank into them, and they mulled it over, they slowly too began to sink a bit lower.

"Yeah you're...you're right. It _sucks_." Jackson finally agreed, rolling on his back to stare at the ceiling with a deep frown.

"Worse thing is most of them don't even _realize_ it until they're older and have ptsd from everything they went through. They're just kids that think having superpowers is cool, and there's totally nothing wrong with fighting people that want to kill you or hurt and torture you, and frequently come very close to doing so. Makes you grow up fast, because if you don't, you'll be left in the dirt in more ways than one." Duncan mumbled drearily.

"I'm just so tired of it. It's _not fair_. They don't deserve it. We don't deserve it. None of these kids deserve it." Heathcliff shook his head.

"And what sucks more is that in the end what real choice is there? If they refuse to use adults for their fighting, and no kids get up for it, then the villains _win_. Nobody will be able to fight them. Woopdy doo, there goes the world." Matilda said, giving a pair of jazz hands before sighing and tossing an arm over her face as well.

"I'm so _tired_ of this. I just...want to be able to be a kid. Want them to be able to be kids. But it's not going to happen. I _hate_ this." Ruby said, curling in on herself.

And once again, the room went silent as they lost themselves within their dark thoughts. Thoughts of an unchangeable future pressed on by unchangeable facts tightened around them like strings on a puppet. The time ticked away, and their already cracked hearts broke further.

It wasn't long until they shattered completely.

In the end, it was Julio who finally broke the silence.

"Hey. Movie night with the works?" He asked softly. The others nodded slowly after a bit, most of them slowly getting up once it was said.

"Yeah. Movie night with the works." Jackson sighed.

It wasn't going to help change the facts. It never would. But at least it could help distract them from the ever present squeezing and pain in their chests. At least even with all that pain, they still had each other to help ignore it.


End file.
